The Coming Data Crisis

Click through for 10 ways your company can lose data, as identified by Kroll Ontrack.

As the sheer volume of data that needs to be managed increases, so, too, does the opportunity to lose it. The problem, of course, is that most IT organizations still treat backup and archiving of their data as an event rather than something that needs to be managed on an ongoing basis.

Jeff Pederson, manager of data recovery operations for Kroll Ontrack, a provider of backup and archiving software and services, has outlined the 10 most common ways IT organizations lose data, starting with the simple fact that they fail to take backup seriously and then not keep current with the latest technological advances.

Unfortunately, Pederson concedes that such advice all too often falls on deaf ears until something catastrophic actually happens. The good news is that as more IT organizations confront larger data management issues being brought on by the rise of cloud computing, virtualization and Big Data, more of them are addressing backup and archiving issues as part of the process. In addition, IT organizations are confronting a maze of compliance issues that all assume there is some form of backup and archiving in place. And just to make matters even more interesting, users are more mobile than ever, which means the opportunity to lose data is multiplying with each passing day.

The trouble is that, right now, the technologies that most IT organizations have in place today can’t keep pace with the volume of data, resulting in backup windows that exceed 24 hours. On top of that, many IT organizations are confused about the difference between backup and archiving, which, more often than not, leads to extended recovery times when looking for a particular piece of data.

The end result is that many IT organizations are starting to recognize that they need to prioritize what data is being backed up when based on its value to the business, which now includes any fines that might be levied in the event the business can’t produce certain data.

Sometimes it takes the magnitude of constitutional crisis to get any organization to address long-standing issues that most people would rather ignore. From an IT perspective, the backup and archiving crisis is now upon us, so it’s no longer if backup and archiving is about to become a problem, but rather when.

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